UN Efforts in Syria Failing, Annan Tells Le Monde

International efforts to find a
political solution to the violence in Syria are failing, United
Nations special envoy Kofi Annan told French newspaper Le Monde.

“Evidently, we haven’t succeeded,” Annan, who also
represents the Arab League, said in an interview with Le Monde
published yesterday.

An uprising that began peacefully 16 months ago and evolved
into a deadly confrontation has led the international community
to reconsider its strategy over how to persuade Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, whose family has held power for four decades,
to leave.

Syrian forces fought rebels in Aleppo in the north of the
country as they sought to reassert control over the region, the
U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-
mailed statement yesterday. More than 50 people were killed
yesterday, AP reported, citing activists.

The violence has claimed more than 10,000 lives. About
4,000 Syrians have been killed since Annan took on the
peacemaking mission in February, according to the Local
Coordination Committees, an activist group.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Annan’s
admission should be a “wake-up call” to those who still
support Assad.

“Annan was admitting the obvious,” Clinton said at a
press conference today in Tokyo. It “should be a wake-up call
to everyone. The future to me should be abundantly clear to
those who support the Assad regime: their days are numbered.”

Support Lacking

An absence of U.S. support for Syria’s rebels may lengthen
Assad’s rule, Senator John McCain said on the CBS program “Face
the Nation.”

Other countries in the region are “crying out for American
leadership,” the Arizona Republican said. Assad’s “days are
numbered, but these days could be very large in number. Right
now, Bashar al-Assad is able to massacre and slaughter people
and stay in power.”

The first defection of a member of Assad’s inner circle
highlights the growing isolation of the Alawite-dominated
regime. Syrian Brigadier-General Manaf Tlas, a Sunni Muslim, was
a confidant of Assad, who is Alawite, an offshoot of Shiite
Islam. His defection was announced in Paris by French Foreign
Minister Laurent Fabius at a Friends of Syria meeting July 6.

The decision to abandon Assad “underscores the very real
worry that this war is turning into a civil war drawn along
religious, communal lines,” said Joshua Landis, director of the
Middle East program at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, in
response to e-mailed questions.

Civil War

More than 70 percent of Syria’s population is Sunni, and
Assad and his ruling minority depend on the loyalty of Sunni
Muslim officers.

Tlas, formerly a commander in the elite Republican Guard,
is the son of ex-Defense Minister Mustapha Tlas and was a
childhood friend of Assad. Before leaving the country, he headed
Brigade 105 in the Revolutionary Guard, according to the pro-
government website Syria Steps.

Tlas urged other soldiers, regardless of their rank, to
“quit this bad track,” according to a letter to his troops
with his signature, reported by Agence France-Presse, which
couldn’t verify the letter’s authenticity.

World powers adopted a plan for a Syrian transition
government on June 30, altering a draft agreement proposed by
Annan after Russia objected to language that would have
prohibited and members of his inner circle from being part of a
transitional government.

UN Monitors

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has recommended reducing
the number of monitors in Syria, and having the smaller mission
based in Damascus, to encourage a political dialogue. The UN
monitors’ three-month mission expires July 20.

The Security Council will vote this week on a resolution
based on Ban’s recommendations.

Clinton said at the Paris meeting of Friends of Syria that
Russia and China, two veto-wielding members of the Security
Council, are blocking movement toward a settlement in Syria and
urged that they be pressured to end their support of Assad’s
government.

“I ask you to reach out to Russia and China and not only
ask, but demand they get off the sidelines,” Clinton said to
more than 100 delegates at the conference. “I don’t think
Russia and China think they are paying any price at all --
nothing at all -- for standing with the Assad regime.”

China’s Stance

Clinton’s remarks were “totally unacceptable,” Chinese
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in a statement on the
ministry’s website. China has wide international support for its
“just and constructive” stance to resolve the Syrian conflict,
he said.

Russia didn’t attend this Friends of Syria meeting. Russian
representatives were sent to a Syrian opposition meeting in
Cairo on July 2-3.

Annan said in yesterday’s Le Monde that while Russia has
influence on the situation, he isn’t certain that events will be
determined by that country only. Shiite Iran can’t be ignored as
an influential ally of Syria, Annan said.

Authorities have portrayed the unrest as a conspiracy and
the protesters as radical Islamists. At the Paris gathering,
opposition figures advocated a no-fly zone and criticized the
group for moving too slowly to help Syrian civilians.

While Ban’s report says the UN can’t verify the number of
casualties, the world body cites non-governmental organizations
as reporting the number of dead since the outset of the
insurrection to be 13,000 to 17,000.